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<title>The Sorting Hat Debate: A Hogwarts Alumnus Weighs In by Mighty_Meerkat</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468896">The Sorting Hat Debate: A Hogwarts Alumnus Weighs In</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mighty_Meerkat/pseuds/Mighty_Meerkat'>Mighty_Meerkat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Extended Metaphors, Gen, In-Universe Newspaper Article, and jk rowling, as i'm coming at it from a cis point of view, fully admit this might be Clumsy, so please correct me if i get stuff wrong, specifically the trans rights debate in britain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:48:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>870</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468896</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mighty_Meerkat/pseuds/Mighty_Meerkat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Hogwarts Alumnus going only by the pen-name 'Roonil Wazlib' offers an opinion on the Hogwarts House Debate that is currently going on in Wizarding Britain - specifically, whether or not your house is something you're innately born with or something you can define for yourself.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Sorting Hat Debate: A Hogwarts Alumnus Weighs In</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Like nearly every other wizarding parent in the United Kingdom right now, and some Muggle parents too, I’m missing the annual trip to King’s Cross Station to see my children off on the Hogwarts Express. I miss watching them meet up with their friends and family, talking about what they got up to on their holidays and what they’re excited to do when they get back, rolling their eyes at me and their mother when we catch up with our old classmates. COVID-19 has even got me missing the House Talk. </p><p>Just before my middle child started Hogwarts, right on the edge of Platform 9 ¾, I noticed them looking nervous. Not wanting my last sight of them for three whole months to be tainted by the guilt that I’d let them go about to burst into tears, I asked what was wrong, and we had the House Talk, very quietly, by ourselves. </p><p>My child was worried they might end up in Slytherin. Now, as I reminded them, although Slytherin House has a reputation for producing a lot of famous Dark wizards and witches over the years, like every other house, it has produced some truly good ones, and some who, like the rest of us, can fall somewhere in the middle. These days, it values determination and resourcefulness far more than blood purity or money, and its students can be found enjoying the same extracurriculars as their classmates in Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and even Gryffindor. And not just in Duelling Club. </p><p>But that wasn’t really what my child’s worry was about. It was about being put in Slytherin – or any house, really – without a choice in the matter, and then living there for the rest of their life. </p><p>I should add, at this point, before anyone claims otherwise, that I have my child’s full permission to talk about this with you. When I told them I was going to write a rebuttal piece to Rita Skeeter’s op-ed: Call It What You Want: You Are Your House And It Does Matter, they immediately offered their own experiences with the Hogwarts house system to use as an argument. Well, actually, the first thing they said was ‘But Dad, you always say that the best part of leaving Hogwarts was not having to write more essays and the second best part was not having the furniture try and kill you when you were late to Astronomy!’. But I digress.</p><p>The point is, firstly, that your Hogwarts house is not some innate biological quality that we’re all born with. True, some of us come from families where everyone is Sorted into a particular house, and so we automatically gravitate towards that house, but I know just as many people who are in different houses from their siblings and parents, and say the experience really helped them to understand who they are as people. And what makes us a member of that house can vary from person to person: in my forty years on this planet, I’ve met cautious Gryffindors, proud Hufflepuffs, down-to-earth Slytherins and absent-minded Ravenclaws. But all of those people felt they belonged in their house just as much as everyone else in their dormitory. It’s rather like a good Chicken Tikka Masala – everyone has their own recipe, with their own ingredients and every recipe is someone’s favourite. And some people have vegetarian chicken substitutes, but my stomach is getting away from myself at this point. At any rate, the Sorting Hat will let you choose, though I’ve been told by a friend that it will intervene if it feels you’re making the wrong choice for you.</p><p>(Side note: I’ve been told that British Muggles are having a similar sort of debate but with slightly more serious ramifications that I don’t feel entirely qualified to comment on, although as a man I had a round with in a pub said, ‘I honestly don’t care what you’ve got down there, just as long as you’re not trying to stab me and then blame it on my deranged ex-client in order to cover up the murder of your sister, you’re good with me!’ I don’t know what he did for a living, but he did introduce me to a fantastic brand of beer, so I trust his judgment)</p><p>And finally, what defines you when you’re eleven doesn’t define you for the rest of your life. I’ve met people who have thought that they were only ever going to be shaped by the values of their House’s founder, only to develop qualities more traditionally associated with other houses, like bravery, ruthlessness, humility, and quick-wittedness, later on down the road. At my current job, I work with approximately ten Slytherins, six Ravenclaws, seventeen Gryffindors and fourteen Hufflepuffs, and I have more of a rivalry with the people who make their tea a different way than I do, or who support a different Quidditch team. Harpies rule, Cannons drool. </p><p>About the Author: Roonil Wazlib is a nom-de-plume used by a commenter who really, really wishes to remain anonymous. He was very specific about remaining anonymous, but would like to thank his wife, children, in-laws and his proofreader, who he says needs to be anonymous even more than he does.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This fic was pumped out over the course of the evening when I found out that JK Rowling's latest Cormoran Strike novel will apparently feature a male serial killer who dresses as a woman to prey on his female victims. Goddammnit JK, I looked up to you, I defended Gay Dumbledore and all the compendiums of knowledge, and I said that you probably didn't consciously write all those stereotypes that other people have talked about into your books because very few people do, and I hated that you were a TERF before but now it's explicitly in your work and that's just...blech. So now I've written this piece in which Harry Potter writes into a wizard newspaper to give his own opinion on an issue that happens to sort of mirror the British trans rights 'debate' in a sort of fun way, and also I briefly brought Cormoran Strike into it because I really liked The Cuckoo's Calling, and the TV show's quite good too.<br/>Oh, and I remembered to put in a bit about Harry's stomach, because that's one of the main things I remember from the books, other than being taught to stand up for minorities, and to understand that adults we look up to will always let us down at some point, but that's OK.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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